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What I've Been Up To: Part Two. Palm Desert

When our first lovely week ended, we drove back to Vegas, where my sis caught a flight home and DH picked me up.  We spent a few hours with the Princess, who unfortunately wasn't feeling well.  We got her as squared away as we could, had dinner with her, then spent the night.  We left for the drive to Palm Desert in the morning.  Due to a few miscalculations by the navigator (unfortunately me), what should have been a 5 hour drive at the most turned into about 7-1/2.  We successfully weathered the mistake with good humor, and embarked on a pleasant week in another desert.

We went on a hike up into the hills and apparently my other hiking hadn't whipped me into adequate shape, because I thought I was going to have a heart attack for part of the time.  This was a lot more straight uphill and the terrain was much more dusty and desert-y than what we experienced in the high desert of Utah.  Different but also interesting and a good experience (it seemed much better after it was over!)



There was a collection of heart-shaped rocks by the side of the trail and we decided that it was perhaps to commemorate all of the almost-heart attacks suffered by people trying to walk up the hill.



The rest of the week flew by as I helped DH a little with his business, saw a few friends, and spent a little time by the pool.  We enjoyed being together as that's been a rarity the last few months.  The original plan was for DH to drive me back to Vegas for the next leg of my trip, but the unfortunate drive the week before made that seem a bad idea.  I reserved a seat on a little commuter airline and flew on a teeny plane for an hour and was back.  The Princess picked me up and we headed to her house to prepare for the final journey.

Knitting accomplished:  Dane Shawl finished!  I had a lovely skein of handspun yarn that I've been trying to knit into something for what seems like forever.  I tried two patterns and didn't like how the yarn looked with either of them.  The third time the pattern was ok but I ran out of yarn.  I found a pretty lace shawl pattern called Dane and started it.  I left it in the desert because I didn't really have any confidence that it would ever work.   Surprisingly, when I got there this time I had only a few rows to finish and I had plenty of yarn to spare, the pattern looked nice with the yarn, and the finished project is a winner.  A super nice surprise!


Winter Femme Cabled Hat:  While at the spa, we had such wonderful trail guides that I wanted to do something special for them.  I noticed a couple of them wearing knitted hats in the morning, so I decided to knit up a bunch to send to them.  I had some Queensland Kathmandu DK in the closet left from my Shapely Boyfriend sweater (that I'll show you when I get around to catching up with the knitting that I haven't documented here.)  I grabbed a ball and started the hat.


The adventure continues......

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